How do you get investors’ attention?
If you think sending a pitch deck to an investor before an in-person meeting is a good strategy, think again, says Alex Iskold, managing director of startup accelerator Techstars NYC.
“The main issue with a pitch deck is that it is subject to misinterpretation,” he wrote in a blog post on the topic. “Investors get a lot of decks and they tend to skim and glance over them.” He also thinks decks fail to capture the passion founders exhibit when they talk about their companies.
His argument: replace the written deck with a video pitch. To test the idea out, he had the founders from Techstars’ NYC Summer 2016 class do exactly that.
Below are the results: 15 pitch videos that were screened for investors at the accelerator’s Demo Day, which took place last Thursday.
1. Electronic Gaming Federation builds, oversees and broadcasts esports programs on college campuses.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EKNsHO0THM&w=560&h=315]
2. Forestry is a CMS system for developers who are building “serverless” sites.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYk-dwDusBE&w=560&h=315]
3. Grubbly Farms sells animal feed made from black fly larvae.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76qV-KY31-c&w=560&h=315]
4. Healthie is an online platform that enables dietitians to track and manage their clients’ data and progress.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gizDMTEAeBU&w=560&h=315]
5. IOpipe is an analytics and distributed tracking service that allows coders to identify errors in real time.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uYqv8-gpFU&w=560&h=315]
6. Leblum is a service that allows consumers to purchase flowers directly from New York City’s wholesale market.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6nM-w6s_6w&w=560&h=315]
7. Mindmate builds apps for Alzheimer’s patients and their families.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWuiUOys1RE&w=560&h=315]
8. MyFin is an online platform that helps millennials organize and track their finances.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMfIfvBpH9M&w=560&h=315]
9. OnFrontiers connects individuals with experts and business professionals in countries across the globe.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS-4EG2jVR8&w=560&h=315]
10. Patch Homes offers home equity financing at 0% interest, with no monthly payments.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt904pyjTU8&w=560&h=315]
11. Pollen is a marketing automation platform for retailers that delivers targeted ads based on customers’ browsing data.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhDc-wRLJX8&w=560&h=315]
12. ProcessOut is a smart router for online payments.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UdThn_Axm4&w=560&h=315]
13. Purple is a platform that sends users real-time news updates.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQUNpWIkT3U&w=560&h=315]
14. Skopenow collects online data on individuals from around the web to analyze their risk of engaging in fraud, criminal activity, and other dangerous behaviors.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2o_LbbCvCI&w=560&h=315]
15. SkyWatch is developing an API that makes it easier to purchase satellite imagery.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kggopwVXz6c&w=560&h=315]
